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What's That Smell in the Kitchen

            
             Poems are literary works in which poets illustrate their views of certain topics. Poems have a suggestive power due to the different literary techniques that poets tend to use. Marge Piercy had a specific idea in mind when she wrote the poem entitled, "What's That Smell in the Kitchen?" The purpose Marge Piercy had for writing this poem was to express her opinion about feminist rights. Marge Piercy used metaphors and symbolism to maximize the effectiveness of her work. By using these techniques in combination with each other, Piercy successfully gets her message across that women detest the idea of being oppressed and are trying to escape it. .
             Men and women need and want to perform self fulfilling work. The poem "What's that Smell in the Kitchen?" demonstrates this idea. Piercy catches the attention of her readers with her poem, as it represents the anger some wives feel about the oppression that they receive from their husbands. .
             This poem explains how women across the country are burning their husband's dinners. The reasoning for this is more then just a lack of ability but the fact that they are getting fed up with catering to their husbands needs. The women want a self-fulfilling job. This act of burning dinners demonstrates their idea that they should do what they are comfortable with and that they shouldn't be oppressed by staying in the home and doing the housework, which is what the husbands prefer. .
             Symbolism is a key technique that Piercy uses as she illustrates the idea that women despise not having equal rights. The burnt dinners symbolize the unsatisfying fulfillment that women receive when taking care of the house. The correlation between the two is made when this symbolism is looked at analytically. A dinner is burnt when it is excessively cooked. When something is burnt, it is generally tossed aside because it is considered to be inadequate. This thought parallels the idea that women feel tossed aside.


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